I have been hard at work this week on restoring the Motion Picture Apparatus Company tripod, but in the meantime I wanted to share with you this quick project I completed while waiting for paint and parts to arrive. This Manfrotto 3066 tripod has been sitting in the shop for several years missing its quick release top plate and feeling sad. Manfrotto’s 3066 tripod is a nicely made, lightweight, all aluminum tripod.
The Manfrotto folks said they didn’t stock the top plate anymore, and I could only find similarly lacking tripods online, so while I had a bit of time to spare between projects, I decided to make a new quick release top plate for this one. The top plate on this tripod is a large dovetail plate with notches on one side of the dovetail that help you find the balance point for your camera. I was going to make this out of Delrin, but sadly I didn’t have any left, so I used a piece of aluminum plate that was a cut off from an earlier project.
Once I had determined the angle of the dovetail, the machining job here was quite straightforward. I included a ⅜-16 adjustable tie down screw and copied the notches on the dovetail to match the original. I machined in two pockets for some cork non-slip padding, and carved out several lightening holes on the bottom of the new quick release plate. While this isn’t a particularly valuable tripod, it now has a bright new future not in the landfill, but underneath a camera. I haven’t decided whether to pair this with an ARRI ST or an ARRI 2C/B, but any camera 40lbs. or less should work perfectly on this tripod.
